Bug Squad

Every insect looks prettier when it lands on a tower of jewels (Echiium wildpretti). When in full bloom, the 9-to-10-foot-high plant, native to the Canary Islands, blazes with firecracker-red flowers. It's a showstopper.

When we think of pollinators, we usually think of honey bees, bumble bees, carpenter bees, syrphid or flower flies, and butterflies. But wait, blow flies can be pollinators, too.

The crab spider is a clever and skillful hunter. Last Sunday we spotted a camouflaged crab spider (family Thomisidae) lying flat on a sedum. The spider's pink and white abdomen blended so well into the pink and white blossoms that you couldn't tell where the abdomen ended and where the flower began.

There's a killer in our midst, and a chemical ecologist will tell us all about it. The killer: thousand cankers disease. The victim: native black walnuts. The speaker: Steve Seybold.

If you have a bee hive, you most likely have mites. Varroa mites, those blood-sucking parasites that latch onto the brood and also thrive on the adult bees, can weaken and destroy a hive.